Frontline workers sit at the center of enterprise value creation, yet Human Resources (HR) and employee technology platforms have historically underserved them. Despite accounting for the majority of the global workforce and directly influencing Customer Experience (CX), safety, and revenue, fragmented systems designed for administrative control rather than employee enablement have largely managed frontline roles.
That dynamic is now shifting. Everest Group research indicates that Workforce Management (WFM) is emerging as the primary system redefining frontline technology inclusion. As WFM expands across planning, execution, productivity, pay, and hiring, it is evolving into a system of execution for frontline work.
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Why frontline inclusion lagged
The frontline technology gap was structural. Most HR platforms were built for desk-based employees with consistent system access, predictable schedules, and long planning cycles. Frontline work, by contrast, is shift-based, demand-driven, and highly variable, with limited tolerance for friction.
As a result, frontline technology investments historically focused on time and attendance, compliance, and payroll, while engagement, productivity, and hiring tools often lived outside the flow of work. In CX environments, this manifested in rigid schedules, high attrition, fragmented tooling, and limited agent autonomy. Everest Group’s WFM research highlights fragmented shift patterns, omnichannel demand volatility, rising absenteeism, and burnout as key drivers pushing enterprises to rethink how they plan and manage frontline work.
WFM as the frontline value chain
Everest Group’s WFM value chain illustrates how modern platforms now span the full frontline work life cycle, from long-term planning to real-time execution and adjacent capabilities.
Exhibit 1 illustrates the WFM value chain, covering core capabilities, value-added layers, analytics, and integration across key user personas.
Planning and forecasting
Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven forecasting and scenario modeling are improving demand accuracy across channels and geographies. In CX environments, omnichannel forecasting reduces schedule volatility and improves alignment between demand and staffing. Enterprise platforms such as UKG and Workday increasingly anchor this layer, providing a System of Record (SoR) and planning foundation for large, complex frontline workforces.
Scheduling, flexibility, and productivity execution
Scheduling has become the emotional core of frontline work. Modern WFM platforms increasingly support preference-aware scheduling, shift bidding, and self-service execution. UKG and Workday continue to strengthen scheduling depth for frontline-intensive sectors, while solutions such as ProHance operate as execution and analytics layers within WFM, providing real-time visibility into capacity utilization, adherence, and workload distribution. Increasingly, productivity is no longer a standalone category but a core component of WFM execution.
Real-time adherence and intraday management
Leading WFM platforms support real-time adherence monitoring and intraday re-optimization, enabling dynamic adjustments without transferring operational risk to employees. In contact centers, Everest Group finds that trailblazers combine analytics with automation to recommend corrective actions, reducing supervisor load and reactive firefighting.
Performance and engagement
Performance management is moving into the operational core. In CX environments, advanced WFM platforms analyze 100% of interactions using speech and text analytics to support continuous coaching, quality management, and compliance. Engagement is increasingly embedded into day-to-day execution rather than treated as a standalone survey-driven process.
EWA: extending WFM into financial wellness
Adjacent technologies are also reshaping frontline inclusion, particularly EWA. Everest Group research shows that 77% of enterprises adopt EWA primarily to enhance employee financial wellness, followed by talent attraction and retention (63%). Adoption is strongest in frontline-intensive industries, which represent 88% of surveyed organizations.
Importantly, EWA is no longer viewed as a standalone pay feature. Over three-quarters of enterprises rate holistic financial wellness as a strategic priority, with EWA increasingly embedded into broader ecosystems that include savings, financial coaching, and credit-building tools. Providers such as Branch, Chime, Clair, DailyPay, Instant Financial, Rapid!, Rain, and Stream are central to this shift, positioning EWA as a retention and engagement lever integrated with payroll and workforce systems.
High-volume hiring: pushing WFM upstream
Frontline inclusion begins before day one. Traditional recruiting platforms were not built for high-volume, high-velocity frontline hiring, where speed, accessibility, and simplicity are critical.
Vendors such as Fountain, Harver, and Paradox are redefining this layer by focusing on mobile-first applications, automated screening, conversational AI, and rapid assessments. These solutions are designed for both hiring managers and frontline applicants, reducing time-to-fill while improving candidate experience at scale. As hiring delays directly affect service levels, overtime, and burnout, high-volume hiring is increasingly becoming an upstream extension of the WFM value chain.
What this means for buyers
- Treat WFM as a system of enablement, not control. Evaluate platforms on their ability to integrate planning, execution, productivity, pay, and hiring.
- Anchor on frontline outcomes. Schedule stability, flexibility, reduced burnout, and financial wellness should complement traditional efficiency metrics.
- Adopt an ecosystem mindset. Value increasingly comes from how WFM integrates with EWA providers and high-volume hiring platforms.
What this means for providers
- Move beyond scheduling depth alone. Differentiation will come from broader value-chain coverage.
- Design for frontline reality. Mobile-first User Experience (UX), manager simplicity, and employee trust will matter as much as algorithms.
- Demonstrate measurable impact. Buyers are looking for proof of improvements in attrition, adherence, and workforce resilience.
The trajectory is clear: WFM is becoming the operating system of frontline work. The question is no longer whether to modernize scheduling, but how comprehensively enterprises will re-architect the frontline value chain around enablement rather than control.
If you found this blog interesting, check out our report Earned Wage Access (EWA) in the US: Trends and Market Outlook to learn more about the current EWA landscape.
To take the conversation forward, contact Sharath Hari ([email protected]) and Krishna Charan ([email protected]).